Rum Cellar

London Cocktail Week (6th-12th October) heralds the start of a glittering week of activity for the award-winning El Dorado Rum, which will culminate in a series of master classes and tutored tastings at RumFest at Earls Court on Sunday 12th October.

El Dorado will also be working with Trailer Happiness, one of London’s most Tiki-Tastic bars, where a rum and food pairing event will take place, and Harvey Nichols, who will be offering a twist on the 16th Century version of a Mojito, the El Draque, named after Sir Francis Drake.

Beginning on Monday 6th October, El Dorado will be hosting its first ever Pop-up in the basement of 71 Monmouth Street just off Seven Dials, where guests will be invited to discover the legendary Lost City of Gold.

Voted the world’s best rum a record eight times, guests will take a journey through the rainforests of Guyana, the home of El Dorado rum, where they’ll see and hear the sights and sounds of the lush, tropical surroundings which are indicative of the South American country. They’ll take in the expanse of Kaieteur Falls, the highest single drop waterfall in the world, as they delve deeper into the greenery to find the luscious, liquid gold of El Dorado rums.

Cocktails made with El Dorado’s superb range of rums will be available along with the opportunity to sample tasting flights of the El Dorado range. A planned series of sessions will be hosted by Stefanie Holt, the award winning international brand ambassador for El Dorado Rums, at the Pop-up over the week. Tickets are available from the London Cocktail Week website – http://londoncocktailweek.ticketsource.co.uk/ . The sessions are as follows:

Saturday 11th October from 2pm until 3.30pm. The last of the sessions at the Pop-up. Here’s a chance to put your taste buds to the test and put the information you’ve learnt over the week, into practice. The last session is ‘Guess the Rum’ – a blind tasting competition. Think you know the El Dorado range? Pop in to the Pop-up and blind test three rums from the El Dorado range. You’ll be up against the clock but it’s worth it – a bottle of El Dorado 15 Year Old will be awarded to the person who guesses correctly in the quickest time.

Harvey Nichols Fifth Floor Bar will be offering a cocktail made with El Dorado 5 Year Old to those with a London Cocktail Week Wristband for only £4 over the course of the week. For those without a wristband, the cocktail is £5.50. The Golden Draque, created by Harvey Nichols’ bar manager, Ivan Romano, takes inspiration from the El Draque, named after Sir Francis Drake and thought to be the 16th Century version of the Mojito. The Golden reference is a nod to El Dorado – meaning gold in English- which is used in the cocktail Here’s how to make it:

*To make the roasted pineapple and coffee bean puree, cut one pineapple into cubes, add 50 gram of coffee beans and cook into an oven on low heat for 12 hours. Remove and discard the coffee bean sand blend the pineapple cubes for three minutes until you get a creamy puree.

Garnish: Mint dusted in gold and coffee beans

Method: Gently muddle the mint with the sugar and lime juice. Add the puree and El Dorado and crushed ice. Stir together and top up with soda water.

The rum fun doesn’t stop there. Trailer Happiness in Notting Hill will be offering a selection of three cocktails made with El Dorado Rum, which will be available for £4 to those with a London Cocktail Week Wristband. They are also hosting at Rum Club Food Pairing with El Dorado rum which will be hosted by Stefanie Holt on Monday 6th October from 7.30-8.30pm. Tickets cost £5 and can be purchased from the London Cocktail Week website http://londoncocktailweek.ticketsource.co.uk/ .

About London Cocktail Week

Back for the fifth year, London Cocktail Week – the biggest drinks festival in the UK – is just around the corner. From Monday 6 to Sunday 12 October 2014 get ready to shake, sip and party your way to a fantastic celebration of our capital’s unrivalled cocktail culture.

To be part of London Cocktail Week 2014, festival-goers must buy a wristband, which cost just £10 if booked in advance or £15 once the week begins. Wristbands give access to the huge amount of free sampling and cocktail demonstrations, as well as the renowned self-guided Cocktail Tours; with 250 of the best bars across the capital throwing open their doors to offer bespoke and unlimited cocktails for just £4 all week. Each bar will be mapped out in your FREE London Bar Guide, so there will be no problem navigating around.

The LCW experience starts from wristband collection at one of the London Cocktail Week Hubs from 12noon until 9pm; hives of activity guaranteed to get you into the cocktail spirit. Each Hub has their own unique twist and is placed in the epicentres of the main bar areas– be sure to set aside four evenings to visit them all!

The International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC), is widely generally acknowledged as one of the most prestigious and independent contests of its type in the world, with its rigorous judging: the tastings last seven months with over 300 judges from 30 countries.

This year’s winners were announced at last night’s awards ceremony held at The Guildhall in London and most noteably for us rum drinkers is that Demerara Distillers won both the American & Caribbean Spirits Producer award and The Rum Trophy for their excellent 8 Year Old El Dorado Rum.

Add this to a couple of extra Gold Outstanding awards for their sumptuous El Dorado 12 Year Old and the already highly decorated El Dorado 15 Year Old rums, along with a Gold award for the El Dorado 21 Year and an Outstanding Silver award for their El Dorado 5 Year Old and I think it’s fair to say that Demerara Distillers are deservedly, having another great year.

Full details on these awards and all the other awards in the Rum category can be found on the IWSC website.

Quite literally going up in smoke, the evening of the 8th August 2011 found me avoiding the mobs of malcontent cretins who thought that it would be fun to go on a rampage, through the streets of London.

And what better place to stow away to than Kanaloa Tropical Island Bar & Grill and this week’s Kanaloa Rum Club, with Stefanie Holt and El Dorado Rum. The evening started with a great tasting Rum Swizzle, made with the El Dorado 5 Year Old Rum, whipped up by the Kanaola bartenders. (Pictured below)

Stefanie started the evening, explaining the origin of the Rum Swizzle and the fact that it pre-dated the cocktail bar. Originally made from a combination of rum, sugar, sours and ice whisked together using a “swizzle-stick” from a native plant – the swizzlestick tree, where bits of the bark from the stick would fall into the drink adding a form of bitters. The Rum Swizzle was even said to be the drink of choice at the first recorded cocktail party.

The history theme was continued with the origin of El Dorado Rum and its heritage through the centuries old Guyana rum distilleries and its rum productions. Since the first boom of Demerara sugar production in the “Land of Many Waters” the number of rum distilleries slowly reduced until the last remaining four joined together in 1970, to form Demerara Distillers Limited.

Originally producing bulk rum on behalf of a number of other rum producers, such as Captain Morgan, Lamb’s, Pusser’s, Wood’s and many others, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that the El Dorado brand was launched with their 15 Year Old premium sipping rum. Released to the international market in the 1990’s, to much acclaim, El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum has now won the International Wine and Spirits Competition Rum Trophy an impressive 7 times.

Using molasses made from 100% Demerara sugar cane, grown in plantations next to the Demerara River, El Dorado rums are distilled using a number of column and pot stills, including the last remaining wooden Coffey stills and pot stills. The full range of El Dorado Rum available in the UK consists of El Dorado 3 Year Old, El Dorado 5 Year Old, El Dorado 8 Year Old, El Dorado 12 Year Old, El Dorado 15 Year Old and the El Dorado 21 Year Old.

Our evening’s tastings consisted of all but the 21 Year Old, which was unfortunately down to a lack of available bottles. First up was the El Dorado 3 Year Old white rum. With hints of chocolate and nuts, with a creamy smoothness before a slightly spicy afterbite, this white rum is aged for a minimum of 3 years before being charcoal filtered to remove any colour before being bottled at 40% ABV / 80 Proof. This rum was created for the UK cocktail market, for use in drinks such as the Mojito or Daiquiri.

Next up was the mainstay of Guyana’s rum drinking population, the El Dorado 5 Year Old golden rum. Aged for a minimum of 5 years and blended with older rums up to 9 years old, this rum is also bottled at 40% ABV / 80 Proof and has a slight pineapple aroma, with a smooth start and a slightly spicy finish.

Finishing off El Dorado’s mixing rums, is the premium El Dorado 8 Year Old golden rum, which is as ideally suited to sipping as it is for mixing in a premium cocktail. This 40% ABV / 80 Proof rum is aged for a minimum of 8 years and is a blend of mostly column still rum with a small amount of rum from the pot stills.

Moving away from the mixing rums, we were then introduced to two of the best tasting rums I’ve so far had the pleasure to try. As stated in this blog previously, I “could easily picture myself sitting under a palm tree on a white sandy beach with an ice bucket and a bottle of this rum to while away the time.”

“This rum” refers to the El Dorado 12 Year Old dark sipping rum and with its smooth, sweet, fruity and complex flavours it really is one of my favourite rums. Mostly blended from wooden pot still rums, this rum is bottled at 40% ABV / 80 Proof and is a minimum of 12 years old.

Our last tasting of the evening was the El Dorado 15 Year Old rum, which was originally launched in an attempt to create a premium luxury sipping rum. With the numerous awards that this slightly sweet, spicy and complex rum has won over the years, it is clear that they succeeded. Blended from single pot still rums aged for a minimum of 15 years old, this rum is bottled at a slightly higher strength of 43% ABV / 86 Proof.

With the tasting finished and Stefanie’s descriptions of huggable small American oak barrels and height measurements in “Stefanie’s” done for the evening, the Kanaloa bartenders treated us to a selection of cocktails inspired by the El Dorado rums. Of these, my favourite was the El Dorado 12 Year Old Nui Nui-Ni, which along with the rum itself, is just sublime.

So, as previously my thanks to Stuart, Jamie and the other Kanaloa bartenders for another excellent Kanaloa Rum Club, as well as a huge thank you to El Dorado’s Stefanie for a great presentation and the chance to try so many of their excellent rums in one evening.